Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

Totalitarismo, ingegneria genetica, propaganda, consumismo, decadimento morale, promiscuità, contraccezione, controllo della mente, censura.
C'è così tanto.
Paurosamente attuale.
Questo libro entra di pieno diritto nella lista, in costante espansione e alterazione, dei miei libri preferiti.

'For of course, they didn't content themselves with merely hatching out embryos; any cow could do that. We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings... All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny...like drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob. Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's min. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too-all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides-made up of these suggestion. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!... Suggestions from the State.'

'An Alpha-decanted. Alpha-conditioned man would go mad if he had to do Epsilon Semi-Moron work-go mad or start smashing things up. Alphas can be completely socialized-but only on condition that you make them do Alpha work. Only an Epsilon can be expected to make Epsilon sacrifices, for the good reason that for them they aren't sacrifices; they're the line of least resistance. His conditioning has laid down rails along which he's got to run. He can't help himself; he's foredoomed. Even after decanting, he's still inside a bottle-an invisible bottle of infantile and embryonic fixations. Each one of us, of course, goes through life inside a bottle. But if you happen to be Alphas, our bottles are, relatively speaking, enormous. We should suffer acutely if we were confined in a narrower space.'

'But chastity means passion, chastity means neurasthenia. And passion and neurasthenia mean instability. And instability means the end of civilization. You can't have a lasting civilization without plenty of pleasant vices.'

'How can I? he repeated meditatively. 'No, the real problem is: How is it that I can't, or rather-because, after all, I know quite well why I can't-what would it be like if I could, if I were free-not enslaved by my conditioning.'

'But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin'

"How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!"

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